The coating industry is faced with the problem of cutting down on volatile emissions with state and federal regulations being enacted to control the effluents allowed to escape into the atmosphere. This has prompted considerable coating reformulation. One of the routes taken has been the attempt to replace all of the volatile solvents in a coating composition with reactive diluents that become a part of the final coating. These compositions have become known in the art as 100 per cent reactive coatings. Such coatings are often cured by free-radical polymerization on the coated substrate; they can also be cured, in many instances, by irradiation with ionizing or non-ionizing energy.
In the past, many difficulties have been observed, in producing radiation cured high solids coatings having good hardness and toughness together with satisfactory adhesion by irradiation procedures.